A Prayer of Repentance

A PRAYER OF REPENTANCE

My failures to be true even to my own accepted standards:

My self-deception in the face of temptation;  My choosing of the worse when I know the better;

O Lord, forgive.

My failure to apply to myself the standards of conduct I demand of others;

My blindness to the suffering of others and my slowness to be taught by my own;

My complacence toward wrongs that do not touch my own case and my over sensitiveness to those that do;

My slowness to see the good in my fellows and to see the evil in myself;

My hardness of heart toward my neighbor’s faults and my readiness to make allowances for my own;

My unwillingness to believe that thou hast called me to a small work and my brother to a great one; O Lord, forgive.

—Excerpted from A Diary of Private Prayer
by Scottish theologian John Baillie